Btw, do see ‘Vera Stark’ and ‘Diana Vreeland’

September 28, 2012 by

Amanda Detmer and Sanaa Lathan in the West Coast premiere of Lynn Nottage’s “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark” directed by Jo Bonney at the Geffen Playhouse. Michael Lamont photo.

A b&w movie inspired Pulitzer Prize-winning playwright Lynn Nottage to write her latest work, “By the Way, Meet Vera Stark.” Making its West Coast premiere at the Geffen Playhouse in Westwood, the play runs through Oct. 28.

Says Nottage: “I was watching television late one night when I came across a 1930s film called ‘Babyface,’ which featured a very charming and talented young African-American actress named Theresa Harris. When the film ended, I immediately began roaming the Internet in search of more information. …

“I was struck by my own ignorance, not only about Theresa’s prodigious and eclectic career, but also about a whole generation of African-American screen actors who plied their trade in relative obscurity. My unmitigated curiosity … led me to the actress Vera Stark. Indeed, ‘By the Way, Meet Vera Stark’ pays homage to Theresa Harris and other African-American performers who for decades were relegated to the margins of the frame.”

I saw the play on opening night. Though I thought it faltered a bit in the second act, “Vera Stark” is insightful, witty and visually delightful. Sanaa Lathan leads the excellent cast. You can read the LA Times review here.

And a must-see movie: “Diana Vreeland: The Eye Has to Travel.” I saw this last year at the Chicago Film Festival and Vreeland is a fascinating subject, no matter how you feel about fashion.

I will be posting a longer piece based on my interview with Lisa Immordino Vreeland (Diana’s granddaughter-in-law) but wanted to at least note that it is open in some U.S. cities with more to follow. Why don’t you?

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Free ‘Champagne’ from Alfred Hitchcock …

September 26, 2012 by

Alfred Hitchcock’s newly restored silent comedy classic, “Champagne,” will be streamed live at the British Film Institute and online at The Space on Thursday, Sept. 27, at 7:30 p.m. (GMT). You can watch a clip here.

“Champagne” (1928) is a Jazz Age comic parable. It tells the story of a spoiled rich girl (Betty Balfour) who leads a life of luxury on the profits from her father’s champagne business.

Suspecting that his daughter’s fiancé (Jean Bradin) is a gold-digger, Dad (Gordon Harker) tells Betty that the family fortune has been wiped out in the stock market. When the boyfriend leaves, the father thinks this proves his case.

The premiere will be accompanied by a new score performed live by award-winning composer, producer and performer Mira Calix.

Also, before Thursday’s live stream, you can watch four Hitch documentaries on The Space. (“Champagne” will not be available on-demand after the event.)

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Tere Tereba welcomes a surprise special guest to Book Soup

September 24, 2012 by

“He was LA’s top mobster for a generation. You don’t get more outrageous and brazen than Mickey Cohen,” says author Tere Tereba. “He was the ultimate anti-hero because he did what he wanted to do. He went against the cops, he fought city hall. He did all the things you’re not supposed to do and everybody’s afraid to do. Even his showy style of doing business. He dressed the way he wanted to, in a semi-Zoot suit. He knew what he liked and he followed it.”

Earlier this year, Tereba published the acclaimed book “Mickey Cohen: The Life and Crimes of L.A.’s Notorious Mobster” outlining the history of the man and the city, from Prohibition to the mid ’70s. This Friday, Sept. 28, she welcomes a surprise special guest to her reading and signing at Book Soup on Sunset Boulevard, which was Cohen’s turf in his heyday.

Oh, and drinks will be served!  Zoot suits optional.

The event starts at 7 p.m. at Book Soup, 8818 Sunset Blvd., West Hollywood/Los Angeles, CA 90069; 310-659-3110.

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On the radar: At the V&A, ‘On Hollywood,’ window popping

September 18, 2012 by
Three exhibitions, one in London and two in New York, look well worth a visit.
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Robert De Niro as Travis Bickle

“Hollywood Costume,” which explores the central role costume design plays in cinema storytelling, is the autumn exhibition at London’s V&A Museum. With more than 100 of the most iconic movie costumes from 1912-2012, the show is an opportunity to see the clothes worn by characters such as Dorothy Gale, Indiana Jones, Scarlett O’Hara, Jack Sparrow, Holly Golightly and Darth Vader.
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Most of these clothes have never been publicly displayed and have never been seen beyond the studio archives, says the museum. The exhibition opens Oct. 20 and is scheduled to close on Jan. 27, 2013.
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And running at the V&A through Jan. 6, 2013, is another bit of sartorial fun: “Ballgowns: British Glamour Since 1950.”
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“On Hollywood” was shot in Kodachrome 64 color film.

“On Hollywood,” an exhibition of color photographs by Lise Sarfati, continues through Oct. 13 at the Yossi Milo Gallery in New York, following a show earlier this year at the Rose Gallery in Los Angeles. Sarfati, who lives and works in Paris and Los Angeles, will have a solo show at Bibliothèque Nationale de France in 2014.
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“Tucson” 2011 by Lee Friedlander

For “On Hollywood,” Sarfati shot women on street corners, sidewalks, parking lots and corner stores, using Kodachrome 64 color film, which was used for Hollywood movies of the 1940s. Says the gallery: “The Technicolor quality of the film stock presents the unglamorous subjects and locations as a heightened reality tinged with old Hollywood artifice.”#

Mannequin – images by photographer Lee Friedlander – will open Oct. 26 at the Pace/MacGill Gallery in New York, following an earlier show at San Francisco’s Fraenkel Gallery. Friedlander shot images of store windows in U.S. cities over the last several years. You can see a selection of New York shots here. The work will be displayed through Dec. 22. Born in 1934, Friedlander has sustained an influential body of work over five decades.
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Robert de Niro image from “Taxi Driver,” 1976. Costume designed by Ruth Morley. Columbia/The Kobal Collection
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Free stuff from FNB: Win Alfred Hitchcock’s ‘The 39 Steps’

September 7, 2012 by

I have notified the winner of the WHV/TCM Greatest Gangster Films: Humphrey Bogart set, featuring “High Sierra,” “The Petrified Forest,” “The Amazing Dr. Clitterhouse” and “All Through the Night.”

The September giveaway is one of my fave Alfred Hitchcock films: “The 39 Steps,” recently put on DVD and Blu-ray by Criterion. First released in 1935, it’s a prototypical Hitchcockian story of a wrong man (falsely accused) on the run.

I think the reason I love this movie is that it has aged so nicely and works for a contemporary audience as well as it did 77 years ago. And its stars, Robert Donat and Madeleine Carroll are fresh, sexy and very funny. It’s a very charming love story as well as a murder mystery.

To enter this month’s giveaway, just leave a comment on any FNB post from Sept. 1-30. We welcome your participation, but please remember that, for the purposes of the giveaway, there is one entry per person, not per comment.

The September winner will be randomly selected at the end of the month and announced in early September. Include your email address in your comment so that I can notify you if you win. Your email will not be shared. Good luck!

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Levine to co-host ‘Choreography by Jack Cole’ on TCM

September 6, 2012 by

Critic Debra Levine

Jack Cole and Marilyn Monroe

Los Angeles-based dance critic and arts journalist Debra Levine will co-host a special tribute to the influential dance maker Jack Cole (1911-1974) on Turner Classic Movies. The four-film tribute will be broadcast on Monday, Sept. 10, starting at 8 p.m. ET (5 p.m. PT). Levine joins TCM’s veteran host Robert Osborne to provide commentary.

From 1941 to 1962, Cole pioneered American jazz dance as an art form in Hollywood films. He contributed dance sequences to 30 movies at Columbia Pictures, Twentieth Century Fox and Metro Goldwyn Mayer, some credited, some not.

Cole left behind a celluloid track record of outstanding dance sequences with highly diverse themes (including some with a noir-tinged, nightclubby vibe), all with a recognizable Cole brand that is uncannily contemporary.

TCM schedule for Sept. 10

“Tonight & Every Night” (1945, Victor Saville) 8 p.m. (5 p.m.)
Rita Hayworth, Lee Bowman, Janet Blair, Marc Platt

“On the Riviera” (1951, Walter Lang) 10 p.m. (7 p.m.)
Danny Kaye, Gene Tierney, Gwen Verdon

“Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1952, Howard Hawks) 11:45 p.m. (8:45 p.m.)
Marilyn Monroe, Jane Russell

“Les Girls” (1957, George Cukor) 1:30 a.m. (11:30 p.m.)
Kay Kendall, Taina Elg, Mitzi Gaynor, Gene Kelly

Born John Ewing Richter in New Brunswick, N.J., in 1911, Jack Cole’s extraordinary career as a top American dancer/choreographer began with pioneering modern-dance troupe, Denishawn. His innovative nightclub act, Jack Cole and His Dancers, toured the nation’s night clubs starting around 1933. In the mid 1940s in Los Angeles, Cole began a 20-year run as a brilliant and innovative Hollywood choreographer, crafting ingenious customized dance sequences for stars like Marilyn Monroe, Rita Hayworth, Betty Grable and others.

Cole coached the stars not only in movement but also in song and line delivery. Writing in the Los Angeles Times, Levine called Cole’s “Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend” from “Gentlemen Prefer Blondes” (1953): “a delicious confection, a piece of Hollywood perfection.”

Cole died in Los Angeles in 1974; he was 62.

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Book ’em: Parry, Keller, Kardos, Braver, Baker, Winter, Black, Nakamura, Lehane, Vincelette

August 30, 2012 by

Lately I’ve been getting up a little earlier than usual so I that I can read a few pages of a good book as I drink my morning coffee. It’s a lovely way to start a morning, assuming you’re into murder and the dark mysteries of the human heart. In the past few weeks, I’ve been lucky – there’s a feast of new books to choose from. I’m making progress on many of these titles and plan to run full reviews in upcoming posts.

“People Who Eat Darkness” by Richard Lloyd Parry (FSG, $16) A British journalist’s unforgettable account of a true crime that took place in Tokyo in 2000: the disappearance and murder of bar hostess Lucie Blackman, just 21 when she died.

“A Killing in the Hills” by Julia Keller (Minotaur, $24.99) Keller, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist (Chicago Tribune), crafts a spellbinding murder mystery set in her home state of West Virginia.

“The Three-Day Affair” by Michael Kardos (The Mysterious Press, $24) A debut thriller about three longtime friends who make one mistake, forcing a chain of decisions that will haunt them forever.

“Misfit” by Adam Braver (Tin House Books, $15.95) Braver gives a literary, imaginative rendering of the final days of Marilyn Monroe, who died Aug. 5, 1962 in her Brentwood home.

“The Empty Glass” by J.I. Baker (Blue Rider Press, $25.95) The LA County deputy coroner discovers Marilyn Monroe’s secret diary and starts to probe the sad and sinister details of the star’s death in this first-time novel by a veteran magazine journalist.

“The Twenty-Year Death” by Ariel S. Winter (Hard Case Crime, $25.99) A mystery divided into three sections. Part one, set in 1931, is an homage to the marvelously prolific French author Georges Simenon. Part two takes place in 1941 and honors noir great Raymond Chandler. And last the darkly compelling Jim Thompson gets his due in a 1951 setting.

“Vengeance” by Benjamin Black (Henry Holt, $26) A Dublin-based pathologist finds himself in the middle of a battle between two families. Noir with a 1950s Irish twist by this Booker prize-winning author (aka John Banville).

“The Thief” by Fuminori Nakamura (Soho Press, $23) The first novel by the celebrated Japanese author to be translated into English, “The Thief” is a minimalist sliver of Tokyo noir told in the first person by an anonymous pickpocket, says Laura Wilson of the Guardian newspaper. As she puts it: “This isn’t for those who prefer the conventional crime novel. It is, however, an intelligent, compelling and surprisingly moving tale, and highly recommended.”

“Live by Night” by Dennis Lehane (Morrow, $27.99) According to Publishers Weekly, Warner Bros. and Leonardo DiCaprio have optioned the film rights to this police saga set in Prohibition-era Boston. (Releases Oct. 2)

“Polynie” by Melanie Vincelette (McArthur & Co., $18.95) This novel about a lawyer whose body is discovered in the hotel room of a stripper was shortlisted for a Governor General’s literary award when it appeared in French, according to Quill & Quire. An English-language version will appear in November.

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Bobbi Brown, Leandra Medine to host FNO event in NYC

August 29, 2012 by

Bobbi Brown's new creamy matte lip color will be available at the FNO event in New York.

Just found out about a very cool Fashion’s Night Out event in New York. Bobbi Brown is teaming up with Leandra Medine, founder of The Man Repeller, at an ideal venue to talk shop: Brown’s pop-up shop in Grand Central Terminal.

Medine explains the MR concept as follows: “outfitting oneself in a sartorially offensive mode that may result in repelling members of the opposite sex. Such garments include but are not limited to harem pants, boyfriend jeans, overalls (see: human repelling), shoulder pads, full length jumpsuits, jewelry that resembles violent weaponry and clogs.”

At the shop, Brown and Medine will talk with customers about makeup and fashion trends, and makeup artists will provide complimentary applications. Additionally, customers will get an exclusive preview of Bobbi Brown Red Carpet Creamy Matte Lip Color ($24; otherwise available in October.) Only 500 will be released, adorned with a special FNO insignia.

The event is from 7 to 8 p.m. on Tuesday, Sept. 6, at the Bobbi Brown Cosmetics Pop-Up Shop, Grand Central Terminal, Lexington Corridor, 87 E. 42nd St., New York, NY 10017, 212-867-5168.

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Don’t stay in on Fashion’s Night Out: Next Thursday

August 28, 2012 by

On Thurs., Sept. 6, fashionistas will be out in full force for an evening of power-shopping as Fashion’s Night Out returns for its fourth year.

Where is it? Check the site to find out what’s going on in your city. Last year’s bash featured more than 4,500 events in the U.S. and worldwide 18 countries took part. With special limited-edition products, celebrity appearances and performances, FNO 2012 offers much to entice.

Forty percent of proceeds raised from sales of FNO T-shirts and totes will go to the New York City AIDS Fund in the New York Community Trust, according to FNO.

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Aero Theatre offers straight-up noir delight with Sam Fuller mini-fest, Fritz Lang night, Barry Sullivan tribute

August 24, 2012 by

Sam Fuller

The Aero Theatre in Santa Monica has some terrific noir offerings, starting this weekend. First up, an homage to a master: Underworld U.S.A.: The Pulpy Heart of Sam Fuller Cinema. Highlights of the series include: “Shock Corridor,” “Pickup on South Street,” “Underworld U.S.A.” and “The Naked Kiss.”

As part of Monday Night Mysteries, on Aug. 27, there’s a Fritz Lang double feature, starting with a new 35mm print of “The Big Heat,” starring Glenn Ford, Gloria Grahame and Lee Marvin, followed by “The Woman in the Window,” in which Edward G. Robinson risks his cozy life as a college professor to have an affair with Joan Bennett.

If you missed Alan Ladd’s noir-tinged take on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s novel “The Great Gatsby” at this year’s Film Noir Festival, you have a second chance to see the film on Wednesday, Aug. 29. “Gatsby,” which, in addition to Ladd, stars Barry Sullivan as Tom Buchanan, is paired with another Sullivan vehicle, “The Gangster,” to mark the centennial of the actor’s birth. Special guests scheduled to attend on Wednesday are the actor’s daughter Jenny Sullivan and the Film Noir Foundation’s Alan K. Rode.

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